Earthbound: The War Against Giygas
by G.Reaper
Summary: Novelization of Earthbound (Mother 2 in Japan) with some artistic liberties taken with plot, background, and characters. Rated T for violence, mature themes, and frightening concepts.


**Prologue**

In the year 20XX, the only sentient beings that remained free of Giygas' super-conscience were the Resistance, and the last remaining group of them was about to die in a leaky, humid, and dark basement.

Of the thirty-odd sentients in that horrible cramped tomb, only three had not yet resigned themselves to death: two humans (one a genius, the other a psychoempathic), and one astral being. Those remaining three sentient beings knew two things that the others did not. The first was that there was still hope, if only a fleeting, tiny, nearly absurd sort of hope.

The second was that Giygas was not going to kill anyone in the basement. If it did, then Giygas had clearly discovered the concept of "mercy" at some point during the last three years of desperate warfare across the multiverse. There was no reason to think that Giygas had learned any sort of compassion at all, because Giygas had no need for it or any other weak mortal concepts. Giygas was power incarnate, and power lusted only for more power. The appropriation and domination of minds and souls was the only power that Giygas still desired, perhaps because it loved hurting things the way a quietly disturbed child might break a frog's leg and watch it hop in circles. Perhaps because Giygas no longer had a sane mind of its own, and simply wanted to touch, if only briefly, something shining and solid and rational like a sane sentient being's mind.

Perhaps Giygas no longer had need for reasons.

The three hopeful beings in the basement of what was once a laboratory (now a smoking ruin below a writhing red sky) were deliberately not concerning themselves with whatever private theories they had about the nature of Giygas. They knew it was immaterial; they had a job to do. Unfortunately, the job was a terrifyingly complex and slow one.

"Doctor, why have you stopped?" the shining blue astral being whispered to the human who had just been tinkering with what appeared to be a large metal-plated box. The being was perhaps the most frightened of the three, because it alone existed simultaneously at two points in the fourth dimension. Its body was ten years in the past, while its mind was in the now. Maintaining this state required a heightened sense of time, allowing (or rather, forcing) the astral being to glimpse a short ways into the immediate future. "You have to hurry, they are looking for us."

"I need to think," the tinkering human replied, wiping sweat from his brow with a sweep of his right hand. "I think it's almost ready, but I have to think now."

"I know, Doctor, but-"

"Jien, remember your training," the other human said, sitting cross-legged and appearing calm. His lips quirked into a small sardonic smile. "Or have you actually forgotten that you are supposed to be a master of Yi?"

"Yi is helpless before this," Jien, the astral being, whispered. "My ego is rallied despite my best control, Prince Poo."

"It surely could not hurt to at least keep a sense of humor," said Poo. "Was it not you who taught me-"

"Poo, Jien, for God's sake, let me **think**" said the doctor.

They all fell silent. The doctor had his eyes tightly shut, his head now resting on the box as if in prayer.

_Jeff, there are times when both scientists and believers alike must make a leap of faith. The only difference is that a scientist calls his leap intuition, and makes up a reason for it in the lab report later._

"There won't be a lab report this time, father," muttered Doctor Jeff, and chuckled despite himself.

"Jeff…" Poo said, resting a hand on the back of Jeff's shirt. It was soaked with warm sweat.

"Relax, Poo. I'm OK." Jeff said, getting to his feet and looking down at the box. "It's as ready as it can be. I couldn't get the XYZ coordinate functions working better than 60%, so it'll take you basically anywhere except inside a wall or similar predicament. Could just plop you out a few miles into the atmosphere though."

"I will be fine. We prepared for such an eventuality; I will not be defeated by something so inane as a bad fall."

Jeff turned to Poo, and looked into his friend's small brown eyes for what he knew was the last time. He extended his hand. Poo took it. They shook.

"Find him," Jeff said.

Poo smiled as he closed his eyes and gently took his hand away from his friend's almost clinging grip. "I will Jeff. I will. Get the proxy ready."

Jeff opened his mouth as if to say one more thing, perhaps to ask if Poo was sure he would go, then closed it again. It would have been a pointless question.

Jeff walked to a small wooden workbench and picked up something that looked like a metal bee. It fit in the palm of his hand.

"Now remember," Jeff said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice and assume what his father had always called the 'doctor's dialogue', "this proxy body can contain your full consciousness, but it's very fragile. You can do as much mental arm wrestling as you like, but if the wrong person gives you a good swat, that'll be it."

Poo kept his eyes shut tight and said nothing.

"If…**when…**you find the target, stay with him as long as you can and support him, but do not intervene any more than absolutely necessary. He has to learn as much as possible on his own, or you may endanger the prophesy. You'll have a month-long operational lifespan, and at the end of it…"

Jeff's voice wheezed away before he could say more. He tried again, but all that came out was a sort of ghastly croak. His vision shimmered in front of him and he wiped at his eyes, struggling to regain his composure.

"That's enough, Jeff," Poo said quietly. "Activate the proxy. Your part is nearly finished."

Without another word, Jeff nodded, and taking a straightened paperclip from his pocket, inserted an end into a minuscule hole at the top of the tiny bee body. The bee's wings began to twitch, then move tentatively, then with a steady but rapidly increasing pace, to beat up and down. A distinct buzzingsound whined its way under the heavy sounds of rumbling fear and destruction a few feet above.

Poo, still with his eyes shut, sat down and began to breathe slowly and deeply. He sat, perfectly still, as his breathing grew deeper, and slower, and deeper still, and slower still, until it seemed to Jeff that his last inhale would aspirate the air from the entire basement.

From the tiny bee hovering over his hand, Jeff heard a modulated, tinny voice say, "I'm ready."

"Jien? Time to start making your way back. You're going to have a much longer trip than Poo here," said Jeff, as he opened a small hatch in the box. The metal bee that now contained Poo's mind and soul flitted into the box, and Jeff closed it.

"What about you, Jeff?" Jien said, his voice already beginning to fade back, back not only in distance but in time.

Jeff shrugged and brushed a few damp stray blond hairs from his eyes. "I guess I'll just wait here. Wait for the end, be it heaven or hell."

Jeff turned to look at the blue form of Jien, but it was already gone.

"You just make sure to do your part, too," Jeff said to himself, and turned back to the metal box that contained both his friend and the hopes and prayers of a million-billion stars.

"Lock and load!" Jeff cried, and sent his late father's greatest invention, the Phase Distorter Mark 10, into the past.


End file.
